All posts tagged special advisers

Tight new controls on the government’s special advisers (SPADS) have been imposed by Number 10. With a thin smile, David Cameron told them when they were all appointed after the election that if they leaked, gossiped or briefed against colleagues they would be booted out. Each cabinet minister has a SPAD or two in tow to help them out, but most had to be approved by Number 10 (Iain Duncan Smith refused and chose his own). Number 10 is trying to keep them all on very short leashes.

Nick Watt at the Guardian has the latest installment of this developing saga. Downing Street has its howitzers aimed at Liam Fox and is so disgruntled with the defense secretary that it has parachuted in its own approved press SPAD, Hayden Allan, from Tory central office to keep an eye on him.

One can understand the instinct to limit leaks and the potential for story-related naughtiness, but like many journalists I’ve seen this attempt to control advisers in the departments from the center fail time and again. It never works. New lot sweeps in, appoints young crop of fresh-faced advisers, tries to terrify the life out of them by ordering them not to deviate one jot from their script, tells them to be on their guard and to avoid disseminating any gossip and to notify the center (Number 10) of any lunches, dinners or drinks they might be foolish enough to consider having with journalists.

Some of my best friends are, or have been at one point or another, special advisers to government ministers. Generally they’re not bad people, they just started hanging round with politicians, usually after university, got in with the wrong crowd of ministers and under peer pressure accepted a post as a SPAD because they thought they could handle it. Before they knew what was happening, they were locked in mortal combat with the departmental head of press over the precise wording of a pointless media release nobody reads about the minister’s visit to inspect a new geothermal energy facility in Leamington Spa.

Of course the daily life of the SPAD working for a government minister is not always like an episode of the comedy “The Thick of It,” although quite often it is for days on end. “My minister thought the ‘Thick of It’ was a documentary,” says one ex-aide who tells wonderful tales of Whitehall warfare and collective lunacy.

But SPADs — who are appointed from outside government to advise ministers — are under renewed attack. A report written by retired civil servants for something called the Better Government Initiative (how about a Less Government Initiative?) says that the number of SPADs should be reduced, as though they are horrible gray squirrels destroying the native habit of cuddly old red squirrels, the senior civil servants.